Marion Davies (Portrait Treatment) 2010

1. Davies was born Marion Cecilia Douras on January 3, 1897 in Brooklyn, New York, the youngest of five children born to Bernard J. Douras (1857–1935), a lawyer and judge in New York City; and Rose Reilly (1867–?).

2. She was educated in a convent.

3. By the mid-1920s, her career was often overshadowed by her relationship with the married Hearst and their fabulous social life at San Simeon and Ocean House in Santa Monica; the latter dubbed by Colleen Moore "the biggest house on the beach – the beach between San Diego and Vancouver".

4. The coming of sound made Davies nervous because she had never completely overcome a childhood stutter.

5. An "urban legend" having to do with a rumored relationship with Chaplin has endured since 1924. Chaplin (among other actresses and actors) and Davies were aboard the yacht the fateful night Thomas Ince died. Despite the lack of evidence to support a relationship, rumors have circulated since that Hearst mistook Ince for Chaplin and shot him in a jealous rage. The rumors were dramatised in the play The Cat's Meow, which was later made into Peter Bogdanovich's 2001 film of the same name* starring Edward Herrmann as Hearst, Kirsten Dunst as Davies, Eddie Izzard as Chaplin, Joanna Lumley as Elinor Glyn, Jennifer Tilly as gossip columnist Louella Parsons, and Cary Elwes as Ince.


* Davies was rumored to be the inspiration for the Susan Alexander character portrayed in Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, which was based loosely on Hearst's life. This led to various portrayals of Davies as a talentless opportunist; the most recent being Melanie Griffith's in HBO's RKO 281.

Welles himself, as stated in his foreword to Davies autobiography The Times We Had, said he deeply regretted that so many assumed Susan Alexander was a carbon copy of Davies, and that the real Davies was a great actress and a wonderful woman. He also claimed that the Susan Alexander character owed as much to the Chicago tycoon Samuel Insull's wife, for whom he built an opera house.

Davies was portrayed by Virginia Madsen in the telefilm The Hearst and Davies Affair (1985) with Robert Mitchum as Hearst, and Heather McNair in Chaplin (1992). Madsen later became a Davies fan and said that she felt she had inadvertently portrayed her as a stereotype, rather than as a real person.

In the Bogdanovich movie The Cat's Meow (see above), Kirsten Dunst played Davies as a witty, intelligent woman.

A documentary film Captured on Film: The True Story of Marion Davies (2001) premiered on Turner Classic Movies.